SEC says certain proof of work crypto mining is not a security (Ledger Insights)
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a note saying that solo and pooled mining for proof of work blockchains will generally not be considered to involve securities. The crux of the argument is that in both cases the expectation of profit is based on the efforts of the miner, not of others. The Howey securities test requires the expectation of profit based on the efforts of third parties. Solo mining involves a miner mining covered crypto-assets using their own computational resources, working alone or together with others to operate a node and mine. Mining pools involves miners combining their computational resources with other miners to increase their chances of successfully validating transactions and mining new blocks on the network. Reward payments may flow from the network directly to the miners or indirectly to them through the pool operator. [Read more at the SEC]
US Treasury Lifts Sanctions Against Ethereum Mixer Tornado Cash (Decrypt)
On March 21, 2025, the U.S. Treasury delisted Ethereum coin mixing service Tornado Cash from its list of parties sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) reversing course after first blacklisting the service in 2022. The removal was actually a bit tardy because the Treasury had been required to remove it by March 17, 2025. In November, a fifth circuit judge ruled that the Treasury had overstepped its authority by targeting Tornado Cash’s smart contracts. The judge wrote that autonomous software cannot be classified as property and therefore cannot be sanctioned. Subsequently, Department of Justice prosecutors asked for and given until March 17, 2025 to remove Tornado Cash from the OFAC black list. [Read more at Decrypt]
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